Why is that hilarious? It is in line with the studies I’ve read. I’m on my phone so it is a little hard to find cites. With focused study and the proper learning environment adults achieve fluency faster, but it us rare that they ever achieve a native like accent. Children with exposure under the age of 11 typically have no trouble in the other hand
Children with exposure under the age of 11 typically have no trouble [achieving a native-like accent] in the other hand
I started learning French at 10, and Spanish and Italian at 12, so this seems to predict I would have a native-like accent in French but not in Spanish or Italian. As a matter of fact, I do think my accent is slightly better in French, but I don’t think the difference is large enough to count as “native-like” versus “non-native-like”, and furthermore I suspect it has more to do with patterns of study and practice well after the ages in question (e.g. some systematic training in French phonetics at age 16) than with anything that went on in my brain during the first year.
1) Anecdotal evidence doesn’t really mean anything. Everyone develops slightly differently − 11 years isn’t a hard wired rule. These are rough averages. I expect that in the data there were some nine year olds that had difficulty assimilating, and some 13 year olds that had no trouble.
2) What the early exposure does is for example train your brain on distinguishing and producing phonemes which would otherwise literally be imperceptible otherwise.
3) French, Spanish, and Italian are very similar languages, in structure, idioms, and phonetics. It is not uncommon for adult learners of these languages coming from related backgrounds to develop a near-native accent within a realistic study regimen. This is because there are not that many perceptual hurdles between these European languages—if you’ve learnt one of these languages as a child, you have most of the mental machinery necessary to handle a native accent in one of the others. IIRC these studies are often more about Vietnamese or Chinese kids learning English or vice versa, where the problems are much, much greater and the prior of adult success very low.
The quote is about fluency, not accent. The first sentence is correct. The second sentence is the hilarious part; I read it as “linguists are generally idiots.” It is harder for me to survey linguists than the literature, but in my limited attempt, it appears correct.
Why is that hilarious? It is in line with the studies I’ve read. I’m on my phone so it is a little hard to find cites. With focused study and the proper learning environment adults achieve fluency faster, but it us rare that they ever achieve a native like accent. Children with exposure under the age of 11 typically have no trouble in the other hand
I started learning French at 10, and Spanish and Italian at 12, so this seems to predict I would have a native-like accent in French but not in Spanish or Italian. As a matter of fact, I do think my accent is slightly better in French, but I don’t think the difference is large enough to count as “native-like” versus “non-native-like”, and furthermore I suspect it has more to do with patterns of study and practice well after the ages in question (e.g. some systematic training in French phonetics at age 16) than with anything that went on in my brain during the first year.
1) Anecdotal evidence doesn’t really mean anything. Everyone develops slightly differently − 11 years isn’t a hard wired rule. These are rough averages. I expect that in the data there were some nine year olds that had difficulty assimilating, and some 13 year olds that had no trouble.
2) What the early exposure does is for example train your brain on distinguishing and producing phonemes which would otherwise literally be imperceptible otherwise.
3) French, Spanish, and Italian are very similar languages, in structure, idioms, and phonetics. It is not uncommon for adult learners of these languages coming from related backgrounds to develop a near-native accent within a realistic study regimen. This is because there are not that many perceptual hurdles between these European languages—if you’ve learnt one of these languages as a child, you have most of the mental machinery necessary to handle a native accent in one of the others. IIRC these studies are often more about Vietnamese or Chinese kids learning English or vice versa, where the problems are much, much greater and the prior of adult success very low.
The quote is about fluency, not accent. The first sentence is correct. The second sentence is the hilarious part; I read it as “linguists are generally idiots.” It is harder for me to survey linguists than the literature, but in my limited attempt, it appears correct.